Mars chip to test for life signs

[tocqueville]

By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News

ExoMars will search for possible Martian life, past or present
It is set to become one of the key experiments on ExoMars, Europe's next mission to the Red Planet in 2011.

The Life Marker Chip (LMC) will test soil samples drilled from below Mars' surface for specific molecules that can be associated with life.

The results might not be a definitive proof of the existence of microbes, but they could still provide tantalising evidence for their possible presence.

A UK-led international consortium is developing the technology.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5072668.stm

[Benhurst]

1. Those presumptuous Europeans. Don't they realize

outer-space belongs to BushAmerica, The World's Only Superpower?

[Phoonzang]

2. It's about damn time.

Finally we're equiping a probe to look for what's really important about Mars. I don't see why those two probes NASA sent couldn't have had a "life-detecting" instrument on them but I suppose the Europeans are really ahead of us in everything these days. Just hope it doesn't have an accident like the Beagle 2.

[dave502d]

3. What wll the church say about life on Mars? n/t

[htuttle]

4. They'll say, "Mars? What Mars?"